Reading and Use of English Part 8: Multiple Matching 3
Moving on to the third reading as part of your practice for this part of the exam, let’s now take a look at a reading about Tutankhamen. As before, each section/paragraph is followed by a series of questions to help you analyse the text before you can move on to answering the questions below.
On 5th April, 1923, one of the men behind the discovery of Tutankhamen, Lord Carnarvon, died in Egypt. Some said he had been ‘cursed’. Where did this superstition arise from?
A
When George Herbert, otherwise known as the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, died just over 90 years ago he was one of the most famous men on Earth. Having spent an estimated £35,000 on excavation in Egypt, hunting for glory, he finally got it. His man in the field, Howard Carter, had discovered the steps down to the unbroken seals on the tomb of Tutankhamen in the Valley of Kings. Together they broke in a small portion of the door. ‘Well, can you see anything?’ the Earl asked. ‘Yes, came the reply, as Carter waved his candle and caught the glint of ‘wonderful things!’ The story was a press sensation in a gloomy post-war world still mourning the dead of that terrible conflict and the influenza pandemic that had followed shortly afterwards. The tomb was formally opened in February 1923, with visiting royalty, dignitaries and the world’s press in attendance
B
But it was just six weeks after the grand opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb that Carnarvon died in Cairo, having contracted a blood infection as a result of a mosquito bite, and then getting pneumonia. His death helped lend more credibility to one of the most enduring superstitious stories in modern times: the curse of the mummy. Rumours about the death abounded. It was said that the lights had flickered off across Cairo at the precise moment of the Earl’s death and that, when the mummy of the king was unwrapped, a wound on the cheek exactly matched the place where Carnarvon had been bitten. The day after Carnarvon died, English writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was admired at the time as a man of great intelligence, stepped off a boat in New York and confidently declared to the waiting press that an evil spirit may have caused Lord Carnarvon’s fatal illness. A gullible public were duly impressed and the stories have continued up to the present day.
C
Exasperated professional Egyptologists always point out that such ‘curses’ have nothing to do with the beliefs of the Ancient Egyptians. An obscure, transitional pharaoh in the Middle Kingdom, dead at 18 and shoved in a cramped and unfinished tomb, was raised to eternal fame by his unearthing. This would be a blessing, not a curse. Indeed, there are no curses or imprecations marked on the doors or walls of any tomb in the Valley of the Kings. The mummy’s curse was actually a fevered invention of those who came later, clambering through the Egyptian necropolis: tomb-raiders and excavators, greedy for riches.
D
This is also a story later generated by the rivalry of the press. The assembled journalists waiting outside the tomb were seething with rage because Carnarvon had signed an exclusive deal with the Times. Rival titles sent journalists over with the explicit aim of spoiling it all. It was Arthur Weigall, writing for the Daily Express, who told the story that he had given Carnarvon six weeks to live after seeing his arrogant demeanour on the day of the grand opening. The tabloids went crazy after their own prophecy seemed to be fulfilled. More seriously, though, the curse must surely derive from an inherent taboo against messing around in burial grounds. It sems wise to avoid being too close to dead bodies, and there are many explanations of the curse that explain it as infection resulting from bacterial build-up in confined tombs.
E
Yet it is striking how unconcerned Europeans have been about Egyptian mummies until recently. For centuries, the wealthy carried a bag of powdered mummy which was rubbed on wounds as a salve. When the artist Edward Burne-Jones discovered what was put in “Mummy Brown’ he insisted on giving a formal burial to a tube of oil paint in his garden. And since the bitumen-soaked mummies burned for a long time, 19th century American writer Mark Twain even joked that steam trains were fuelled by them. His sense of transgression and what might be culturally appropriate seems to have escaped him. The Egyptian mummy only became an object of scientific interest in itself in the 1830s when they became museum objects. Nevertheless, we can hardly say we have got over this superstition. We remain obsessed with mummy curses. Ötzi, the mummified iceman of the Alps, was discovered in 1991. The team that lifted him from the ice have steadily met with accidents, so it is said, in a variety of Alpine disasters, each incident thrillingly reported by the tabloids.
Now have a go at putting all your knowledge together to answer the test questions below. Sections A to E have been put together as a whole beneath.
On 5th April, 1923, one of the men behind the discovery of Tutankhamen, Lord Carnarvon, died in Egypt. Some said he had been ‘cursed’. Where did this superstition arise from?
A
When George Herbert, otherwise known as the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, died just over 90 years ago he was one of the most famous men on Earth. Having spent an estimated £35,000 on excavation in Egypt, hunting for glory, he finally got it. His man in the field, Howard Carter, had discovered the steps down to the unbroken seals on the tomb of Tutankhamen in the Valley of Kings. Together they broke in a small portion of the door. ‘Well, can you see anything?’ the Earl asked. ‘Yes, came the reply, as Carter waved his candle and caught the glint of ‘wonderful things!’ The story was a press sensation in a gloomy post-war world still mourning the dead of that terrible conflict and the influenza pandemic that had followed shortly afterwards. The tomb was formally opened in February 1923, with visiting royalty, dignitaries and the world’s press in attendance.
B
But it was just six weeks after the grand opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb that Carnarvon died in Cairo, having contracted a blood infection as a result of a mosquito bite, and then getting pneumonia. His death helped lend more credibility to one of the most enduring superstitious stories in modern times: the curse of the mummy. Rumours about the death abounded. It was said that the lights had flickered off across Cairo at the precise moment of the Earl’s death and that, when the mummy of the king was unwrapped, a wound on the cheek exactly matched the place where Carnarvon had been bitten. The day after Carnarvon died, English writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was admired at the time as a man of great intelligence, stepped off a boat in New York and confidently declared to the waiting press that an evil spirit may have caused Lord Carnarvon’s fatal illness. A gullible public were duly impressed, and the stories have continued up to the present day.
C
Exasperated professional Egyptologists always point out that such ‘curses’ have nothing to do with the beliefs of the Ancient Egyptians. An obscure, transitional pharaoh in the Middle Kingdom, dead at 18 and shoved in a cramped and unfinished tomb, was raised to eternal fame by his unearthing. This would be a blessing, not a curse. Indeed, there are no curses or imprecations marked on the doors or walls of any tomb in the Valley of the Kings. The mummy’s curse was actually a fevered invention of those who came later, clambering through the Egyptian necropolis: tomb-raiders and excavators, greedy for riches.
D
This is also a story later generated by the rivalry of the press. The assembled journalists waiting outside the tomb were seething with rage because Carnarvon had signed an exclusive deal with the Times. Rival titles sent journalists over with the explicit aim of spoiling it all. It was Arthur Weigall, writing for the Daily Express, who told the story that he had given Carnarvon six weeks to live after seeing his arrogant demeanour on the day of the grand opening. The tabloids went crazy after their own prophecy seemed to be fulfilled. More seriously, though, the curse must surely derive from an inherent taboo against messing around in burial grounds. It sems wise to avoid being too close to dead bodies, and there are many explanations of the curse that explain it as infection resulting from bacterial build-up in confined tombs.
E
Yet it is striking how unconcerned Europeans have been about Egyptian mummies until recently. For centuries, the wealthy carried a bag of powdered mummy which was rubbed on wounds as a salve. When the artist Edward Burne-Jones discovered what was put in “Mummy Brown’ he insisted on giving a formal burial to a tube of oil paint in his garden. And since the bitumen-soaked mummies burned for a long time, 19th century American writer Mark Twain even joked that steam trains were fuelled by them. His sense of transgression and what might be culturally appropriate seems to have escaped him. The Egyptian mummy only became an object of scientific interest in itself in the 1830s when they became museum objects. Nevertheless, we can hardly say we have got over this superstition. We remain obsessed with mummy curses. Ötzi, the mummified iceman of the Alps, was discovered in 1991. The team that lifted him from the ice have steadily met with accidents, so it is said, in a variety of Alpine disasters, each incident thrillingly reported by the tabloids.